


the time you need

by psikeval



Category: Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Domesticity, F/M, casual touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, Max stays with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the time you need

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of based on [this prompt](http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=46530#cmt46530). See & Mol are my made-up names for the two surviving Vuvalini, based on absolutely nothing, and while it doesn't have to be read as a sequel to my other fic, Dag/Toast is still totally a thing.

\--

 

When they’ve taken out the blood-line and she’s nauseous from being jostled around on her back, Furiosa sits in the front seat, pressed more heavily than she’d like against the fool—Max.

She needs him there, for balance, and there’s little enough room for them all regardless, but she feels lightheaded. Smothered and nearly sick. Her head tilts side to side as if she’s nodding off to sleep, no strength left in her neck to hold it still.

Cheedo’s hand lays gentle on the back of her neck, just over the brand, guiding her down to rest her head on Capable’s shoulder. (She is silent, still, slumped against the window, but her fingers are knotted so tightly in her lap, the knuckles white. Back there, behind them, a war boy’s body blocking the path with the rest of the wreckage. As if losing Angharad wasn't enough.)

“Rest now,” says Capable, never absent enough to stop caring, and Furiosa is still too weak to do anything else. Her eyes drift shut to the comforting roar of the engine, and she’s only brought back for a moment by Max’s fingers on her wrist, pressing just enough to find her pulse. Slower than it should be, maybe, but her heart is steady.

His voice, a low rasp, more soothing than she expects.

“Let me know, if…” he pauses, helplessly in search of the proper words. “If you need more.”

“Don’t bleed yourself out, Maximus.” Dag, with a flick to the back of his head; Furiosa looks over to see it tugging at his lips, almost a smile.

He shakes his head, and it might be a _no_ , the soft sound he makes. “I’ll be fine.”

 

\--

 

“You staying, then?” Toast asks, and everyone around them goes a little bit quiet, waiting for the answer. There’s still conversation around them, shouting beyond, while the center of it here falls to silent anticipation. Furiosa watches it happen and tries not to feel like it matters.

Max looks right at her, lost again — then out towards the desert, up at the dark clay ceiling like it might be planning to fall. He shrugs, closed-in and uncomfortable. “Maybe for a couple days,” he says without looking anyone in the eye.

“Good,” says Capable, and they let that stand for all of them. She gets up from rifling through a box of supplies and heads straight over to Max.

“Sit,” she commands, and he lowers himself obediently onto a nearby crate, lets her tug aside the collar of his jacket to look at the messy double-puncture in his neck. “We should get this cleaned before it can fester.” Capable dabs gently at the dried blood, kind enough to ignore the way he flinches. Beneath, the bruise is an ugly thing, dark purple-red under the skin.

“But,” says Max, looking worried, trying to eye the soft gauze she’s taping to his neck. When she stops and raises her eyebrows, Max grunts and tilts his head, like an apology for giving her trouble. Still, eyes on the ground, he mumbles, “What if she…?”

“Furiosa’s going to _rest_ ,” says Capable, her tone hard and her eyes too bright, so Furiosa only lifts her mismatched hands in surrender when they both look up at her. “She won’t be needing it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, sagging against the pillar and closing the eye not already swollen shut, just for a second. It still isn’t easy. Being fully conscious again brings back the fear, skin crawling with the need to be alert, on guard, ready for the next attack. Hard to shake.

A soft hand rests on her shoulder, and Cheedo drops a kiss on Furiosa’s temple. “You did it,” she says softly, and Furiosa tries to breathe past the ache in her throat, the burn of tears in her eyes, lets her body shake with it. Just for a second. Maybe the next will come easier.

“Guess we did,” she answers, nearly steady. “Welcome home.”

 

\--

 

Furiosa finds him wandering the halls late one night, shoulder dragging up against one wall like some kind of anchor. “Hey,” she says, softly, before she gets too close.

He turns to look at her, makes a noise low in his throat, but his eyes are still blank, exhausted, directionless.

“Fool,” she tries, because sometimes his name only puts him on edge, especially when he’s been dreaming, flinching at shadows and every voice he hears. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” Max rubs at his face, focuses more clearly on Furiosa. “Sorry. Couldn’t…”

“Sleep?”

He tilts a hand, equivocal. “Breathe.”

“What about now?” She rests her back against the wall and slides down to sit on the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Max does the same, close enough that their shoulders brush. He only glances at her sidelong, carefully, before staring at the opposite wall.

“Better,” he mutters, and nods, his brow furrowed. “Yeah.”

She lifts her hand cautiously, gives Max time to move if he wants to. He doesn’t, even when her knuckles brush up against his ear. His hair is still uneven, softer now that it’s grown out a little and clean, and his eyes drift shut when Furiosa runs her hand over his head, back and forth.

“You wear that brace even when you’re asleep?”

Max grunts an affirmative. “So… you don’t?” he asks, gesturing to the metal arm.

“It’s not that comfortable.” And it’s foolish, she knows, to rely on something that can quickly be taken away. And so: “I don’t need it.”

He looks at her, eyes sparkling bright in the corridor’s dim yellow light, and those soft lips curve into a smile, more than she’s ever seen. “True,” he agrees.

 

\--

 

See is braiding Cheedo’s hair while she shells peas into a dented steel bowl and talks with Toast, just back from border patrol. Nothing much out there, the past week or so, when they did such a number on the last batch of scavengers. The war boys follow Toast and Mol like their words are gospel, now. Someone had to fill up the gap.

While Furiosa watches, Toast starts building a pyramid of empty pods on their low makeshift table, lip bitten with such concentration as she nears the top that Cheedo smiles.

Max walks in just as the pyramid falls, unnoticed among the cries of disappointment.

There are smears of dirt on his forearms, and one on his chin, like he went to wipe his face with filthy hands. Furiosa reaches out and rubs at the mark, nearly laughs at the face he makes.

“This happen a lot?”

He looks over his shoulder, like Dag will be there to glare at. “She never tells me.”

The couple days he’s staying has turned into several weeks, but no one seems inclined to mention it. He’s been helping with the gardens, under Dag’s supervision, and has acquired a long list of terrible nicknames, _Maxidermy_ possibly the worst. (“But I think it’s good,” she told Furiosa, in private. “When he’s got some work with his hands, he’s not so gone, you know? Even talks back to me sometimes. It’s a whole fucking brave new world.”)

Cheedo and Toast are now idly outlining the foundation of a new structure, something See believes should have a watchtower. “Only if you girls are up to it,” she tells them innocently, and Toast’s eyes narrow at the challenge.

Unprompted by anything at all, a cramp starts in Furiosa’s side and twists quickly around her ribs, a fresh and horrible ache blooming in both her healing stab wounds. She staggers back—

—and Max is there behind her, solid support like he was when she couldn’t even stand on her own. “Got you,” he says quietly, one arm extended to steady her if she needs it, but not curled around her waist, nothing like a restraint.

Dag enters from the other doorway while Furiosa leans into Max and slowly breathes, willing the pain to dissipate. She doesn’t look at either of them, just drops quickly to her knees and wraps herself around Toast from behind, chin tucked over her shoulder. Toast grins and turns enough to kiss her.

Such a small and ridiculous thing, to make Furiosa realize.

“Hey,” she mutters, and jerks her head toward the door, enough of a request that Max is moving right away, helps her into the hallway, out of sight. The pain is fading with every step, every careful exhale. Furiosa doesn’t walk far, just leans herself against a wall and looks at him.

He’s got the kicked-puppy eyes, worried or guilty or both. “Do you need… anything?”

She lifts a hand, scratches her fingernails gently over the week’s growth of beard on his face, and he makes a quiet sound, helpless and hopeful. It’s easy to kiss him, after that.

His mouth is so fucking soft and warm, his lips easily parted for her. Max doesn’t hesitate. He melts into her, giving himself in this as easily as he always has, and Furiosa slings her arm around his neck and holds on.

 

\--

 

Today’s job is dismantling cages from below, built for blood bags and organ plants and worse, tearing them slowly apart so the pieces of metal can be repurposed. She’d thought Max might not want to, but he volunteered.

He reaches past her for a wrench and she swats at his arm, is jostled in return, reaches up to gently thunk his head with her metal hand. “Rude.”

“You hit me,” he points out mildly.

“Bad table manners,” she says, like Capable does sometimes. “You earned it.”

“Philips?”

She hands it over.

It barely feels like work, once they get going. They move around each other seamlessly, hold bars steady to be pried away and pass their tools back and forth in an easy careless rhythm.

After a while, Furiosa loses track of just how long they’ve been here. She’s vaguely aware that the others have been gathering around the stone countertop by the door, sharing their rations of fruit, but it’s not until she braces Max’s shoulder for extra leverage against the crowbar that their attention becomes obvious—poorly hidden smiles, nudging each other and whispering.

“Need something?” Furiosa asks sharply over the creak of metal.

Toast doesn’t look up from inspecting her apple core. “Nope.”

“We just came to see you,” says Cheedo with wide, innocent eyes.

“When’s last time you ate, Maxation?” Dag calls out, pointing lazily at him.

He shrugs, unconcerned, but fidgets a bit when Furiosa turns to look him. “Little while.”

_Fool,_ she thinks quite sincerely, torn between annoyance and affection. “We should take a break anyway.”

It’s all the answer Dag needs to hurl an apple at Max’s head, one of the not-quites, small and almost painfully tart, that fell too early in her orchard. He barely flinches, catches it and takes a bite instead of throwing it back. Capable grins at Dag, triumphant.

Furiosa tries not to smile. They don’t need the encouragement.

 

\--

 


End file.
